MOLAB

Quicklinks

MOLAB (Mobile LABoratory) is a network of facilities from Italy, France, Poland, Greece and Germany, providing a coherent access, under a unified management structure, to a set of portable equipment and related competences, for in-situ non-destructive measurements on artworks. Measurements are carried out in the same site where the actual artwork under examination is located or exhibited, i.e. museum, restoration workshop, open air location etc.

Motivation for MOLAB arises from the fact that a large number of historical European patrimony consists of monuments, sculptures, buildings and that cannot be moved from their location and this implies that non-invasive material studies on these objects must be necessarily carried out in-situ, through portable instrumentation. In addition, even in the case of movable patrimony (such as paintings, ceramics, gems, manuscripts, etc.) it can be often quite difficult, if not impossible, to move such works to a laboratory, due the high risks and costs connected with their transportation and often fragile state.

Typical MOLAB users are Heritage researchers (either individuals or teams from public and/or private institutions) who are developing studies to:

Your project may be orientated towards art‐historical or archaeological questions (execution techniques, dating, under‐drawings in paintings etc; assessing the state of conservation of artefacts; determine or test the optimal preservation strategy to slow down alteration processes; monitoring conservation treatments and informing risk assessment

MOLAB provides: analytical investigations carried out in situ on fragile artworks or precious archaeological pieces so that you don’t have to move them to a laboratory. This access also allows immovable objects like sculptures, monuments and historical buildings to be studied

All the techniques are non invasive, so there is strictly no sampling or contact with the surface under exam

All our teams are made up of highly qualified and trained scientific staff that will accompany the portable instruments, help the Users and give tutorials on the use of the instrumentation

All the data collected during the MOLAB access automatically belongs to you for publishing and disseminating

#Museum30 Day 20: Thanks to collaborative projects such as the @iperionch (on #encaustic binding media) and #APPEAR (a project on ancient panel painting coordinated by @GettyMuseum ), the last 12 months have been all about #mummyportraits!!